Sirius Black and the Monster from Hell
by thisbluepeony
Summary: In which the Marauders have a sleepover. Terror and fluffiness ensue, in not so equal measures.


It was all Remus's fault. Until the summer of sixth year, Sirius Black had been more than certain that nothing scared him. Absolutely nothing. Made him _wary_, perhaps, like hiding in a broom closet from Filch after pulling a particularly magnificent prank, or edging round the Potters' demented cat at breakfast time in the summer holidays for fear of losing a toe or two, or preparing himself to open his eyes each morning after a full moon spent in the Shrieking Shack.

But fear? Terror? Unheard of! He was a knight amongst peasants, a brave pioneer who set the standards, the example, for everyone else. If anything, other people were scared of _him_, what with his furious hexing skills and positively fierce swagger and whatnot.

But then Remus invited him and their fellow Marauders for a summer hols sleepover one sultry eve in July, and everything went to pieces. Yes, it was all Remus's fault. Him and his bloody tellybox.

"What exactly does it _do_?" Sirius had asked suspiciously, prodding at the side of the huge wooden-clad box with his forefinger. It made a dull, tinny sound in response, and he wrenched his hand back.

"It's a television," Remus explained. His parents hadn't allowed it in his room - just as well, since Remus's bedroom wasn't much bigger than a Pygmy Puff's cage - but they had allowed the four boys to sleep in the lounge, laid out on the floor with various duvets and lots of pillows, which was better in a way because they could spread out and make as much noise as they liked without waking Remus's parents.

"Mum wants one," said Peter, who was a Half-blood, "but Dad's suspicious."

"Frank's got one," said James, looking at the bulky contraption with awe. "He says they're _excellent_."

"They are," Remus agreed.

"You still haven't explained what their purpose is," Sirius complained, folding his arms. "Looks like a load of old rubbish to me."

"Padfoot!" James shoved him.

But Remus just smiled patiently and beckoned for Sirius to come closer. He crouched in front of the box and reached out to turn one of the two circular knobs all the way around. The screen suddenly flashed, the glass rectangle filling with what looked like moving concrete, glittering and hissing.

All three standing boys jumped, all three breathing '_Merlin_!' in slightly different tones; James awed, Peter surprised and Sirius actually rather doubtful.

"Is that it?" he asked, unimpressed.

Remus ignored him and started fiddling with the other dial. As he turned it, different images started to flash on the screen, broken and jarred. It took another few minutes before the images started to stay put, but when they did, they showed what looked like moving pictures. A man in a smart blazer and glasses appeared on the screen, staring straight out at them.

"It's a painting!" said Sirius, looking at the moving image with disappointment. "I thought these were Muggle machines?"

"Not a painting," said Remus, standing up. "_Television_. Look, this is the news."

As they listened, they did indeed hear the smartly-dressed man retelling the Muggle news from that day; the severe drought that was suffocating England, something about a man called James Callaghan, and a viking landing on Mars. The last story thoroughly confused Sirius. Vikings on Mars?

Still, he was fascinated by the tele-whatsit itself, kneeling in front of it on someone else's duvet, his nose practically touching the screen.

"Don't get too close. My mum says she thinks it might be bad for your eyes," said Remus, pulling him back a little, also giving the others a chance to see.

"Is it - ? I mean... is he, you know, _in_ there?" asked Sirius in a hushed voice, tapping the screen gently.

Both Remus and Peter burst out laughing at this, and even James joined in with a chuckle or two even though he was just as clueless about these things as his Pureblood best mate.

Sirius whirled round. "What?" he demanded indignantly.

"No, Sirius," said Remus, the first to have stopped sniggering. Peter seemed to be taking full advantage of being the one out of the four of them who didn't say something stupid for once, and so was still stifling his giggles.

"These are pre-recorded," Remus explained. "Well, mostly. Some of them are live, but usually they record them in big studios and then broadcast them to families all over the country. There's all sorts. Television series, films, the news..."

Sirius stared at him. "Live"? "Record"? "Films?" What sorcery was this?

"They're like stories," Peter continued. "People act them out, you know, like when you go to the theatre."

Sirius, who was the most familiar with the theatre out of the four of them, slowly began to understand.

"Ah. So it's like going to see a play, but not?"

"Sort of. They show a lot of actual plays, my parents like them," said Remus. "You can get these things called video players too. You put a tape in and you can watch your favourite films over and over again. They're a bit expensive though."

Sirius didn't understand why anyone would want one of these tape-majigs. Everything on this vision-machine seemed top-notch now that he finally understood what the idea behind them was. And _what_ an idea! Muggles were odd folk, but they had such wonderful ways of making entertainment without magic sometimes.

Confirming the boys' opinion of just how wonderful this telly idea was, they watched the moving screen for another three hours straight, so long that even Remus started to get a bit bored and twitchy. But then, as the end credits of a programme called _Sailor_ appeared on the screen, Remus's face lit up.

"And now, for Friday Fright Night," an unseen man spoke in a posh, solemn voice.

"Fright what?" James gave the others a puzzled look.

"It's this new thing," Remus explained. "Just for the summer, the BBC have extended the airing time by a couple of hours every Friday night to show a scary film."

"Cor, that's brilliant!" said James, Peter looking only slightly less enthused beside him.

"What's a scary film?" asked Sirius.

"A film designed to scare you, _obviously_," James replied with a guffaw, as though he were suddenly the expert. But then he looked to where Remus had stood up and added a hesitant, "Right, Moony?"

"Right, Prongs. I'm going to get us some food, back in a minute."

Sirius automatically started to stand to go and help out in the kitchen, when a sudden deafening screech of violins and a horrific splatter of blood made him gasp and fall back down again straight on to his arse. Scrambling to his knees, he caught the image on the screen properly: _Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell_.

"Woah," James and Peter breathed in unison, edging to get a closer seat to the screen, while Sirius found himself edging back, slightly wary.

It was the music that got to him. It was so ... bloody ... _menacing_. He'd never heard anything like it. Any time he'd come face to face with some sort of ghastly ghost or ghoul - usually when traipsing around Hogwarts after hours - there were no screaming violins or percussion to accompany the sight, just some sappy little spirit, floating around like some kind of gormless bird.

He inched further away from the tele-mabob, seeing that the first scene was set in what looked to be an insane asylum, the awful orchestra not having died down one bit. Suddenly something hit his back and he jumped, scurrying forwards with a gasp.

Turning quickly, he saw it was only Moony's skinny legs. Sirius had managed to shuffle halfway across the room without even realising it.

"What are you doing?" Remus asked, raising an eyebrow and reaching down to hand him a mug of hot chocolate.

"Erm. Just trying to get a better view, you know."

"Sit closer then!" Remus went to join the others and waved him over.

"Don't you know," Sirius said with feigned nonchalance, "that the best seats in a theatre aren't the ones in the front row?"

"This isn't the theatre," Remus pointed out. "Come _on_, Padfoot, the film's starting. You're going to miss it."

Reluctantly, Sirius slid back over and settled himself between James and Remus, mug in hand. Now that the horrendous music had finally stopped, Sirius realised it wasn't actually that bad, and he almost laughed at himself for being so stupid. In fact, the whole thing was quite boring really. _Sailor_, a documentary about Muggle ships, had been _much_ more interesting.

All that was happening in this was some mad bloke was creeping around an old hospital doing mad-bloke sorts of things, like changing his name so he could do all these daft experiments, trying to make people look like other people. If he had some Polyjuice Potion he could have sorted that out in a second, and then he wouldn't have had to devote his time to such a useless exercise. Sirius accompanied this thought with a chortle that earned him a strange look from the others, who definitely weren't laughing.

There was this bit where the mad bloke got hosed down with huge jets of water, all these mad patients cackling at him, and Remus went all stiff and nervous about it, but Sirius just snorted at how preposterous and slapstick the whole thing seemed.

Then this other bloke arrived - less mad, but still horrible sappy - to help _make_ these silly-looking people - or "monsters" as they were supposed to be, but Sirius had never seen such pathetic-looking monsters in all his -

"_Merlin's balls_!" Sirius cried, slopping what little remained of his hot chocolate all over himself and making all three of the boys beside him gasp. But how could he help it? Had they _seen _what had just appeared out of nowhere on the screen?

Oh Merlin, it was horrible. Hairy and bloody and staring with ghastly black eyes, and the screen zoomed right in on it with more of that menacing _duh-nuh-nuh-nuh_ music. Sirius clapped his hands over his eyes without even pausing to think about it.

Without uncovering them, he heard the sounds of crashing and smashing and the horrible beast's groans, and then a man calling shrilly, "_There's a monster in the house!_"

When he peeked between his fingers he saw a great, black, hulking figure appear out of the shadows, loping slowly towards him. He edged back further and further to get away from it, until he felt something grab his wrist. He twisted away with a yelp.

"Sirius," Remus laughed, letting go of him. "It's not that bad."

James and Peter, who had been totally absorbed in the chaos of hospital patients and the stalking monster on the screen, finally turned and noticed the heap of nerves that was their normally rather composed best friend. James was the first to laugh.

"Hark at Sirius!" he cackled. "He thinks this is _scary_."

"No I don't," Sirius snapped, wrenching his hands down to his waist where he balled them into fists. "It just made me jump. It made you jump too, you pillock."

James snorted. "Didn't."

"Bugger off," Sirius muttered back, with no greater defence.

Begrudgingly, he watched the remainder of the film with the others, closing his eyes whenever he could be sure they weren't looking. He didn't want the image of that ape-like thing burned into his mind, with its stitched-on eyes and stolen brain and the way it worked its way through the hospital, slashing everyone that crossed its path to pieces with its great burnt sausage fingers.

He didn't even get some relief when the bloody thing ended, since whoever had made this godforsaken tripe had insisted on using that ghastly orchestra as the backing music for the end credits too. Discretely, Sirius covered his ears while the others dutifully read - and probably attempted to memorise in order to impress everyone back at school - the names of the actors.

Then a loud, long beep sounded out from the television, and Remus leant forward to switch the box of doom off. A buzzing silence filled the lounge, and finally, Sirius relaxed. It was over! He'd made it through, champ that he was.

"Well that was sufficiently dreadful," he trilled, dusting crumbs off his assigned duvet, his body feeling like it was turning to goo from being tensed up for so long.

"Shut up, Sirius, you were practically crying," said James.

"Wetting yourself!" Peter added delightedly from across the room where he was changing into his pyjamas.

Remus didn't say anything, but Sirius saw him stifle a grin. He huffed indignantly.

"Obviously I'm just more alert than you lot," he said, shucking his hot-chocolatey shirt off and tossing it aside. "Sign of a good Auror, that, someone who knows danger when they see it."

"Mate, it was behind a bloody screen!" said James, and he and Peter collapsed into fresh peals of squawking laughter. Sirius didn't see what was so funny. Alright, so perhaps he was a sixteen-almost-seventeen-year-old wizard, and perhaps he was famously fantastic at scaring and pranking _other_ people, but bloody hell - no one had ever prepared him for Muggle monsters!

"It's alright, Sirius," Remus said gently, already getting into his makeshift bed. He'd changed into his pyjamas in the loo ages ago. "I thought it was a bit scary too."

"What?" James barked, sliding beneath his own duvet. "The werewolf and the werewolf's best mate, scared of a bloke in make-up?"

But once Sirius had given him a sufficient amount of thumps, resulting in a brief scuffle which, in turn, resulted in the overturning of Peter's unfinished hot chocolate, James shut up about it and the four of them settled down, side by side, beneath their respective duvets, chatting about things other than ridiculous monsters until, one by one, they drifted off to sleep.

One by one, that was, except Sirius. Because while Peter snored and James mumbled and Remus snuffled, Sirius lay directly in front of the tele-machine. It loomed over him like a menacing robot, the kind he'd seen in Remus's old _Doctor Who _magazines in his bedroom upstairs, daring him to fall asleep. _Just you wait, young Black, just you wait._

He turned on his side, attempting to ignore it, but received a face full of James. Grimacing, he went on to his other side, greeted by the much more pleasant sight of Moony. With a little sigh, Sirius snuggled down into his duvet, pulling it up right under his nose and around his shoulders, and tried to sleep.

He was almost managing it, when suddenly from beside him he heard a little shuffle. His eyes snapped open, but when he decided it could only be James moving about in his sleep, he closed them again. But then came another shuffle, and another.

Then a slow _thump_... _thump_... _thump_ sounded from somewhere down by Sirius's feet. He curled himself up into a ball automatically. He was wide awake now, tensed, his eyes fixed on Remus's sleeping form as the thumping increased, both in speed and loudness. Sirius started to tremble, squeezing his eyes shut.

He knew it. He knew Muggle monsters could slither out of those hell boxes they lived in. _Pre-recorded, my arse_! he thought, terrified, and then he frantically searched his mind for something more poignant because he didn't want "pre-recorded, my arse" to be his dying thoughts.

Then suddenly - THUMP! - and a heavy hand - no, no, a _claw_ - grabbed hold of his curled up leg.

He cried out and twisted frantically, bolting up to desperately wrench his leg away with a strangled "_No!_" and, fully expecting to be devoured whole then and there, he was shocked to be greeted only with a loud, high-pitched cackle.

Sirius spluttered.

"James," he gasped, "James, you utter _wanker_."

James giggled helplessly. _Giggled_.

"Your face, Padfoot, your face! _Noooo_!"

"James," came Remus's sleepy, muffled mumble, "stop teasing Sirius."

Peter hadn't actually woken up, which was probably just as well really; Sirius didn't need him laughing at him too.

"Go back to sleep, Sirius," Remus added, settling back down.

"I wasn't asleep in the first place," Sirius muttered, but he obediently lay back down, purposely avoiding looking at the machine across from him. For a while all was silent again.

Until, that was, James reached out and grabbed Sirius in the side again with what he clearly thought was a brilliant, monster-esque groan.

"Right, that's it!" Sirius stood up with stomping footsteps, climbing over Remus's body and snatching his duvet and pillow along with him as James dissolved into laughter. "I'm not sleeping next to that arseface."

"Priceless," James was howling, "priceless. Pete, you awake?"

While Sirius didn't particularly like not being in the middle anymore, since it meant his right side was now exposed to the monster that was inevitably going to arrive to murder him any second now, it was worth it not to have to put up with James's bloody shenanigans anymore. He knew Remus wouldn't tease him like that.

In fact, Remus did the opposite. After about another half hour, when James had dropped off again, Remus murmured, "Are you awake?"

"No," Sirius squeaked back. "Er. Yes." He was surprised Remus was speaking at all; Sirius had been sure he'd been asleep too.

"Poor Padfoot." A clumsy hand reached out from under the covers to pat Sirius's head. When Sirius didn't respond, the same hand reached to pull him by the shoulder - gently, not like that titbag James - bringing him closer towards the warm form that was Moony.

With a little sigh of contentment, Sirius nestled into the sweet-smelling warmth, immediately feeling at least a tiny bit safer.

"There, there," said Remus, a little teasingly but not as though he really minded. "No monsters can get you now."

"You agree he was ghastly though, don't you, Moony?"

"Oh yes," Remus nodded. "But you know, Sirius, Muggle monsters can only attack humans. They won't go near animals."

"What?" Sirius pulled his head back a little to look at the other boy, who nodded again.

"Yeah, it's a known fact."

"You're joking."

"I'm not."

"That's a bit rubbish."

"Why?"

"Well because then surely I can just turn..."

"Into Padfoot?"

Sirius reddened slightly, glad for the darkness of the room. "You could have told me that before, Remus," he mumbled.

"I could have. I'm sorry. But now you know."

Sirius looked at him again, oddly.

"Are you _sure_?"

"Positive."

"Hm."

And finally somewhat satisfied, Sirius settled back down into the blankets, still with Remus's comforting arm around him. Now within minutes, he managed to fall asleep without trouble, relief seeping through his limbs as he stretched out luxuriously beneath the covers.

What kind of old sap was scared of monsters anyway? He was an _Animagus_. No plebby ape was going to drag _him_ into some silly old telly-thing.

Still... he could have done _without_ it, thanks much, Moony.


End file.
